History Forum / General / What If / March 2004

WI Mel Gibson, rather than Arnold Schwarzenegger, enters the
recall gubernatorial election? Due to the celebrity factor, he
probably would win, albeit by less than Schwarzenegger's margin
in OTL. This relates to his ultra-rightist religious-political

A very long time ago, in my highschool/"Jack Point" days I did a WI
about Richard O'Connor, the eminent British general, not being
captured in the Western Desert in April 1941.  O'Connor had just
defeated the Italians at Beda Fomm and the Afrikakorps was on its way;

For a while in the late 20th century, the South was growing at a
per-capita rate higher than the North and the West.  It was thought at
the time that soon the South would no longer be the poorest region of
the US, but would instead even out.  Alas, this did not happen and the

On 16 Feb 2004 17:40:31 -0800, sarcastic_jew@yahoo.com (Ivan Hodes) wrote:

Earlier today, the papers of the late Supreme Court Justice Harry
Blackmun were unsealed. Amongst other things, the documents confirmed
that the U.S. Supreme Court nearly overturned Roe v. Wade in the 1992
case Planned Parenthood vs. Casey.

The ATM and the credit card are two of the most important inventions
in modern commerce. The ATM allows people to get cash whenever they
need it and the credit card allows people to purchase items even when
they don't have the money to purchase them.

The POD is that Al Qadea via some corrupt Russian general in need to
cash, accquire several small portable nuclear weapons and decide to
attack Hollywood on Oscar Night 2002. Effects anyone of a small scale
nuclear device say denonated at the place they held the 2002 Academy

# Roberto Benigni is not nominated in 1998 for best actor or does not
win the Oscar for best actor, instead Tom Hanks wins the Oscar for
best actor.
# Bruce Willis gets nominated for Best Actor in 1999 for The Sixth

I saw "The Passion of the Christ" last night, and a what-if occurred to
me mid-movie:
Variant A) What if one of Jesus' followers, believing that it would be a
sort of mercy killing, killed him on the way to Golgotha and then slips

PoD-late 1940's: The Communist Party wins a majority in the government
of France and turns that country into a semi-ally of the USSR. The
French insist on administering their sector of Germany independently,
thus East and West Germany never come into being, rather there is

What if, instead of the moon, the earth had a twin, same conditions, similar
life forms?. How would that effect history?

What if they had supplied nothing at all tothe USSR?, What difference would
that have made?

USA ISOT 2002 to 1942 – Part the Last "The Postdam Conferences…"
Part A.  Uniting Against the Other.
Berlin, March 1943 (March, 2003)
    Heinz Guderian drew his heavy greatcoat about him as he hurried down

Is it possible to have a POD where entrance to colleges and
universities and the various forms of graduate school is based solely
or mainly on one entrance examination rather than a combination of
GPA, standardized test scores, and other things?

Recently I have been reading Donald C. McKay's *The United States and
France* (Cambridge, MA:   Harvard UP 1951).  I originally took it out from
a library to research the "spoliation claims" that almost led to a US-
French war under Andrew Jackson.  As it turns out, McKay had ...